A General Metaphysic

A working summary and some implications for language

The following is an attempt to give a concise summary of a contemporary version of a metaphysical approach first clearly formulated by Gottfried Leibniz and significantly developed by Alfred North Whitehead. Because the approach reverses several intuitive assumptions about the world any concise formulation tends to be hard to read - both Leibniz's and Whitehead's accounts are notoriously difficult. The summary given here assumes familiarity with a number of issues in both philosophy and physics. The background to these issues and the detailed arguments justifying the claims made are explored in the essay Reality, Meaning and Knowledge.

The universe is constituted by occasions of
experience, which might also be called histories of simple dynamic modes. ‘Experience’
can be construed purely operationally, as a dynamic relation between mode and
universe. However, there are two reasons to invoke a subjective aspect.
Firstly, this places human subjective experience in a unified metaphysic.
Secondly, physics provides no other ‘actual’ aspect, only an abstract
mathematical structure of potential relations. Actuality for a mode is the only actuality we have reason to think exists.

Neither
modes nor occasions are parts because they do not sum to the universe. Each mode is a dynamic asymmetry of the entire universe. (In
loose metaphor, if the universe is a stretched sheet of Lycra, an occasion might
be the whole sheet pulled at a point.) Modes can be at any scale. Modes have no
bearers but might themselves be considered substances in the Cartesian sense of
individuals dependent only on the universe and its laws.

Each occasion is the history of a simple
dynamic mode or unit of change. The entire
nature of this mode is its entering into an occasion that is the co-operation
of the dynamic disposition, or entelechy, of the mode and the disposition of
the rest of the universe, as manifest to the mode as a field of potentials, to
inform the mode’s actual dynamic history. This co-operation of dispositions
cannot be broken down into components. Since the mode has no other nature, it
is for this reason that it is simple. Even the dynamic entelechy of the mode, as described free of context, as
in ‘negative charge’, and any account of the dispositional manifestation of the
universe to the mode, may be considered abstractions from a single event with one-to-all
asymmetry.

The modes of occasions correspond to dynamic quantised modes of modern physics. These
modes may be occupied by one or more quanta (in the sense of 'packets' rather than just energy steps) that are not in themselves separate
modes. A mode equates to an episode of superposition of a particular dynamic
pattern. There are no real persistent individuals that are ‘bearers’ of such modes, such as ‘this electron’,
since there is often no fact of the matter ‘which quantum is which’. Thus, ‘an electron’
is a sequence of many occasions. There are no particles in a traditional sense, just local causal connections; a mode is purely a
dynamic unit of change distributed in a domain of spacetime. Once this change
is manifest (locally) the mode ceases to exist.

The occasion of a mode yields manifest
‘outcomes’ that form the real basis of ‘information’ or ‘determinate values’ in
quantum theory. However, although traditionally described as ‘position of a
particle’ etc. these outcomes only ever exist as features (in general,
potentials) of a single indivisible universal field, domains of which are variably manifest to other
modes in further occasions. Thus, there are no ‘objects’ in the sense of individuals manifest to something, the
only individuals other than the universe are subjects, to which a domain of the universal
field is manifest. (An critical distinction is made here between mode and field. A
mode is a dynamic individual. A field is a determinate pattern of values of a variable that results from many dynamic individuals. This contributes ‘formal causation’ but
not as individuals, only as the pattern of the universe.) Thus, there are no
real sub-fields of the universe except in the reflected sense of that part of
the universal field that is non-trivially manifest to a dynamic mode.

An occasion has a spacetime domain of
non-trivial occurrence constrained by both the dynamic disposition of the mode
and the speed of light. (Related in principle to a light cone but more an ‘occasion
ellipsoid’.) Within this domain there is no time-dependent ‘point of view’. The
mode has one indivisible relation to all features of the field of its entire
domain. Within an occasion there is no
sequence, no before and after, only a block spacetime metric, in which time
is as directionless as space. The
nature of the mode involved, and its dynamic entelechy, is as dependent on its outcome as on its inception, so there is no
sense in which anything has ‘happened’ or ‘is thus and so’ until the occasion
is complete. Sequence is the way occasions connect: it is inter-occasional, not
intra-occasional. In a sense, nothing is changing, or dynamic, within an
occasion. Occasions are dynamic or ‘causal’ by dint of connecting in sequences.
This feature of occasions is almost impossible to form intuitive metaphors for,
creating the illusion of violation of locality.

The general framework proposed draws heavily on both Leibniz and
Whitehead. There is
also common ground with Ladyman’s Structural Realism in that modes are purely
dynamic and relational. However, there is a distinction, potentially with all
three, in that there are no real relations A to B in a universe of occasions
A,B… N, only relations A to universe. Apparent relations A to B are
abstractions from the consequent total ‘progress in harmony’. This harmony is
ensured by the fact that all dynamic dispositions of modes are patterns of asymmetry
of the universe rather than by relations between individuals. This marries with
Leibniz’s view that the dynamic disposition or entelechy of a mode or ‘Monad’
is in fact a disposition of the universe (‘law of God’) not of an autonomous
individual.

The universe is manifest to a dynamic mode as a
single unified pattern. Local features of this pattern may be described in
terms of information or values. However, a more neutral term like data might be
preferable. Information and values are abstractions that only exist in the
context of a complex system that can calibrate and collate features gathered by diverse paths, such as a nervous
system in a mobile body equipped with clocks and rulers. The form in which a
universal pattern is manifest to a mode is ineffable to other modes but to a
human subject it is as ‘ideas’ or ‘qualia’ as defined by the experience of that
subject.

Since collation systems like brains involve
long sequences of occasions any ‘information’, ‘value’ or ‘meaning’ derived
from such collation that seems to be presented in an occasion can only be a
sign of something inferred about a feature or pattern in one or more distant
previous occasions. This is the basis of intentionality (not to do with
intention). Intentionality is puzzling only because lay culture conflates direct
experience with knowledge. Knowledge is much more complex, requiring several
types of convergent pathway to give meanings like spatiotemporal values. We
should perhaps not be surprised that our internal occasions seem ‘like landscapes’
or ‘like writing’ since our instinctive ideas of ‘what things are like’ are so
ill-founded. The mystery is how manifest signs come to have spatiotemporal and
other such meanings, not why the meaning seems to be ‘misapplied’.

It
follows from the above that the space and time of our experience are in no way
analogous to the spacetime metric of occasions. There is no sense in which
domains of the universe are spacious or long-lasting in the way we sense things to be. Our experience is of
manifestations interpreted by the subject mode as signs of dispositional
features abstracted from aggregates of prior occasions. The meanings of these
signs and the way they combine are what they are because of the way evolution
of our nervous systems has been sustained by the dynamics of certain types of
cellular interaction. They are neither veridical nor non-veridical because
occasions do not in themselves have any appearances; only their outcomes have
ineffable manifestations within other occasions to which they connect.

All our contact with the world is through
evanescent Bose mode-based occasions. The photons of light are familiar. Less
familiar are the acoustic or elastic Bose modes that not only mediate sound, but
also inhabit the domains of the ordered structures we call ‘objects’, like
cups, chairs, etc.. These modes are entailed by spatial asymmetries. Their
existence as real entities might be considered doubtful, partly because they
tend to have adequate traditional descriptions and partly because their wavefunctions
give values for variables that may be unmeasurable in practice or may have no
obvious interpretation. Nevertheless, physics requires that these modes carry
energy, quantized in terms of ‘phonons’ just as modes of electromagnetic
radiation are quantized in terms of photons. Moreover, modes occupy familiar
objects even if there is no overt acoustic ‘vibration’ (they may have negative
energy) being entailed simply by the ordered structure of the object. They are
the real vaseness that ceases to exist when it shatters.

Occasions of experience for human subjects can
be expected to relate to such phononic modes, since these are the modes that
have domains tied to ordered structures above the atomic level, relatively
insensitive to changes at the individual molecular level. Their dynamics relate
to long-range spatial order in electromagnetic phenomena and so may couple to
local perturbations in electrical potential as in piezoelectric and
flexoelectric effects. Such coupled modes can be expected to occupy the dipolar
membranes of individual excitable (nerve) cells and support occasions in which
the universe is non-trivially manifest to the phononic mode in the form of the
pattern of electrical potentials at synapses. The idea of an individual cell
being a human experiencing subject is unfamiliar but has a 300 year pedigree and
there are several independent neurobiological arguments that support it. The
~1,000-50,000 degrees of freedom of the field of incoming potentials should
support an appropriate richness of manifestation. Networks of cells cannot
support single occasions since by definition a network is an aggregate of events
related by sequence.

As indicated by Whitehead, we can expect
experiences of modes within brains to differ greatly from any, subjectively ineffable,
experiences of modes we may postulate in the inanimate world. The patterns
manifest to modes in nerve cells will show high level complex order based on
the collative functions of other nerve cells providing their inputs, evolved to
carry a biologically advantageous ‘narrative’. The narrative meaning of this
ordered pattern of input will also depend on the dynamic entelechy (perhaps
flexoelectric) of the receiving mode, based on detailed parameters of cell
structure that have evolved to mediate useful responses. Aspects of human
experience such as a sense of space and time may relate in some specific way to
the nature of the spatial asymmetry on which our modes are based. However, at
this time speculation on the determinants of meaning to the human subject is
difficult to justify beyond simple issues such as the number of degrees of
freedom involved.

The asymmetry within occasions generates a
duality that is invisibly embedded in natural language. What is manifest in any
occasion is entailed by the sum of all past dynamics (changes), so all
manifestations prior to that of the current occasion are redundant to
description. On the other hand, change is usually described in terms of the
manifestation it is expected to give rise to. The result for current natural
language is a conflation of dynamics and manifestation in the meanings of
individual words and a good degree of conflation in terms of our intuitive world
view. However, our language faculty has the capacity to allocate relatively ‘dynamic’
or ‘manifest’ interpretations each time a word is encountered in a complete
sentence in its non-verbal context such that the sentence couples to
pre-established associations of dynamics and manifestations in the hearer to
generate an increment of information.

Knowledge of the world is not just a matter of
experience. All that we can know of the outside world is its patterns of
change, since the manifestations of those changes in other occasions are not
directly accessible. Patterns of change can only be inferred by collation of
inputs from multiple paths. Signs for these patterns of change must then be manifest to a subject. Knowledge
of the world draws on calibration of inputs in both space and time. Calibration
in space depends on relative movement of the knowing creature. Calibration in
time can be achieved by internal biological clocking (as provided by refractory
periods and oscillations in resting potentials in neurons). This means that
external ‘physical’ events can be allocated to distinct places and times, but internal
‘mental’ events, because there are no moving parts in a brain, can only be allocated
to distinct times. This is probably the main basis for the idea of an
ontological contrast between mental and physical.

It seems likely that for most creatures most of
the time the occasions of experience in their brains that receive a narrative
of the world only receive a narrative couched in the spatiotemporal terms of
the outside world. Internal events may be monitored, but largely at a ‘subpersonal’
level. The boundary between ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ in this context is subtle and
leaky. A pain in the foot would be ‘physical’. An episode of thinking about a
pain in the foot would be mental. It seems reasonable to suggest that the novel
feature of human thought is a more sophisticated ability to allocate and store
episode and sequence recall tags for internal mental events independent of
their relation to outside world events. A cat may have an idea of a mouse not present
but may not have an idea of an episode of thinking about a mouse. The extra
cataloguing mechanism required may be only a slight modification of top down
feedback routines in perception and memory for outside events.

Implication for language

The cataloguing of internal events by episode or
sequence, independent of outside world event episodes, may be central to the faculty
of language. If the cataloguing system is available at birth and ready for use
an infant may be able to relate sequences of signs to dynamic episodes in a way
dissociated from the immediate spatial environment. They may not yet have any
conception of what mental might mean or even that they are a ‘person’ or that
noises come from another person. All they need is the ability to retrieve ideas
of goings on (the cat sitting on the mat), allocated to a spatially unspecified
‘non-now episode’, in response to sensory inputs (i.e. words) that can be used
to infer causal relation purely through sequence without being tied to current spatial
context. Sound seems particularly well suited to this, although a
well-developed faculty of language clearly can make use of visual signs. Most
of the significance of sounds comes from sequence rather than spatial relation.
Moreover, even our hearing of sounds in ‘now episodes’ is usually an ‘integrated
replay’ following the completion of the primary pattern of sensory stimuli,
which, if unfamiliar, we tend to repeat in ‘inner voice’ several times.

Such an outside world-independent temporal
cataloguing system would allow sequences of noises made by a member of a group
returning from a day’s walkabout to be used by others to infer patterns of
change not occurring at that time but at a previous time. Four pig-like snorts
followed by a decrescendo rhythmic clattering could indicate that four pigs had
been seen but had run off. The temporal sequence could be put to inferential
use independent of the current spatial world framework of sitting round the
fire. Syntactical rules for language may not need anything very new. I suspect
that all manifestations, including visual percepts, are interpreted in human
occasions of experience according to syntactical rules that closely resemble
those of language. I would expect features of world dynamics inferred from both
temporal (e.g. for sound) and spatial (e.g. for vision) relations in sensory
inputs to be encoded in the synaptic potentials of dendritic trees in a way
much more similar to linguistic syntactic trees than to pixels in an LED
screen.

A
sophisticated soft-wired temporal cataloguing of mental episodes would allow
the language to develop far beyond the stereotyped version of bees, (whose
language probably uses no temporal catalogue). It would equally allow the
development of a sense of the world being populated by both purely physical and
mental/physical objects (and hybrids) and theory of mind. I also wonder whether
human music reflects the use of contrasting pitch in sound sequences as an
early form of grammatical device, superseded in verbal communication when
tongue and lip movement became more sophisticated.